Who are you, my love?
by Jesa Jaisai
Summary: Bulma's thoughts on her husband. Just a short and sweet one-shot I did today. ^_^ Please read. I'm rather proud of it.


Who Are You My Love?  
  
This is a one-shot that I came up with after being inspired by reading the rather depressing Myth of the Goddess Deianira, the lover to Hercules, written by Doris Vallejo. It explores the meaning of 'love' and delves deep into human nature. I thought it would be interesting to do a take on Bulma's thoughts on her husband, since most of the 'reflective' B/V fanfics out there are almost always spoken by Vegeta. Anyway, here is my idea of Bulma's thoughts on she and Vegeta's relationship.  
  
DuskBringer@serpents.zzn.com  
  
Who are you, my love? That, in seeking to wound you, I wound myself?  
  
* * I have forgotten why I love this man.  
  
He has become a gray, discarded thing within my life that I may not have wished to forget, but have forgotten nonetheless.  
  
I stand before my mirror. It is cracked and worn with age, much like my body has become. It could very well be, as I stand vulnerable and picked naked before it, that I am only trying to find each and every imperfection and that I could, in fact, be presenting myself a Goddess to glass. I stand with my arms hanging limply, my neck turned at such an angle that I may avoid the harsh fluorescent light that is every woman's enemy. I squint, I sneer, and I scrutinize. I see beauty, but my mind will not allow that thought to linger for to long. After all, I am a woman.  
  
Do I no longer love him because I no longer love myself? Is it such that love will be real and embraced one moment, then hurriedly pushed aside the next, fearfully, and without much reason? Do I fill myself with encouraging and prompting thoughts, only to know that I fill my willing body with lies? He loves me, he tells me he does.he must! I whisper this to myself when I am alone and clutching for arms that only turn out to be my own. I tell myself that he will return while I lay within the cool sheets of a great bed that is far too large for one such as myself. It is during these tearful, whispering moments that I am startled to realize, with the help of a great expanse of missing flesh, that what I whisper are lies. He does not tell me he loves me. He does not return after a week's time. Have my self- rewards been so truly empty? Have they been so honestly brutal, despite the reassurances of my mantra?  
  
I turn from the mirror; I do not wish to depress myself further. Where there was once the ghost of a 19-year-old girl, there is now the worn and hardened shell of a woman fraught with age, but unwilling to give in. It saddens me, and so I contemplate further into this relationship I have buried myself within.  
  
I thought I could have him. I allowed myself to think, with the foolish and heated dreams of a young girl, that I could capture this warrior and bring him to his knees. I thought this because, as cold and powerful as he was, I was a young woman, all hips and breasts and wide, wondrous eyes. I thought I could take his body and mend it to my own, bend his thoughts to match mine. All because I had his temper and determination to match. I remember the days of my power. It seems they have dissipated. Now I sate myself on grievances and false hopes, where I once teethed on determination and the discovery and wonder of my own beauty.  
  
What is there now, if I am no longer beautiful? What is there to keep him here? I do not know the answer and.I do not want to.  
  
Vegeta belongs to no one. And even if, curiously enough, he would admit to being loosely attached to another, he could never be truly tamed. Vegeta, this man I find myself loving without much in return, has the unbreakable spirit of a wild stallion, whose skin withstands the beatings of time and enemies while a heart and mind are preserved inside, unbidden to surrender, forbidden by his own accord to allow self-failure. I am but allowed a shadow and brief glimpses of who he truly is. These glimpses are truly brief, these shadows truly thin.  
  
And yet it has been said that I am his soul.  
  
"Why do you stay with me?" I have asked him this worn and tired question too many times to get a real answer any longer. At first I asked because I knew the answer.or at least, I thought I did. I would ask to see his lips curl in that sensual way of his and hear his reply; "Stupid woman. Because you body sings to me, while my own sings with it."  
  
I would blush, and fidget and we would end up heatedly entangled. It always ended the same way. It was on the eve of my 38th birthday that I realized, after noticing the slight drooping of my breasts and the forgotten firmness of my nether regions due to having birthed our two children, that this answer no longer held merit. This was when fear sank in. Fear, and confusion. Why does he stay with me now? I am no longer beautiful.am I?  
  
I thought for the longest time that perhaps it was our children who kept him here.yet something would always emerge in the muddled recesses of my mind that told me otherwise. Our first child, Trunks, was and still remains beautiful. Strong and powerful like his father, he inherited traits from Vegeta that I would have rather he not. The terrible, dark temper, the ability to turn his emotions off when he needed to.things that made me, at first, ashamed of him. Yet be he cruel and dark, Vegeta is not all rough edges and bits of glass. There are stepping stones within him that, when properly treaded upon, lead to things that make a woman feel wild, wonderful, and honored. These same stepping stones are found within my son, however his are much less slippery and far easier to find. It is the memory of his birth that stands out in my mind the most, because it was the worst day of my life and the best day of my life, all at once, all in one great, mind-numbing rush.  
  
I remember the bouquets of flowers. I remember the way the curtains flapped in the breeze because, in my heated labor, I had panicked and asked that they be left open. The Doctors had argued, saying it would only chill my baby and myself. But I needed them open.because it was the only way he would come. There were no doors for Vegeta. There were no waiting rooms. There were no magazines to read. It was only a Prince alien to humanities ways, and to step foot through a mortal door was no way for royalty to make an entrance. And so, without him, I clutched and screamed and grabbed fistfuls of fury as I struggled to give birth to the foreign wonder inside me. I did, and I held his tiny frame against me and ignored the blood and the worried faces and the way my stomach would not stop quivering, because there was only my son and I, and nothing else mattered.  
  
Only my son and I.  
  
Only my son and I.  
  
That night I lay in a hospital bed, I.V's hooked to my arms and my legs like so many strange tentacles, and I waited for him. I remember having no strength, yet finding enough to stagger from my bed after the nurse had shut the window to open it again. I was cold and wounded and, seemingly, forgotten. Were these not reasons enough for his silhouette to appear?  
  
And then he came. Silently, and without a glance in my direction, he glided slowly through the open window and landed on the floor. I did not say anything; I merely shut my eyes, a fool, pretending I was asleep. All I wanted was for him to embrace me, touch me, and speak to me. He went to the cradle and picked up our son.  
  
"Trunks." I whispered to him in the darkness. "I named him Trunks."  
  
"Hn." It was his usual reply. "I see you let the fool humans remove the tail."  
  
I nodded numbly. "I couldn't stop them.and I didn't want to."  
  
He turned to me then, something of long ago flashing in his ebony eyes. It was this something that I never truly understood about Vegeta. His past. It was dark, and he did not care much for it. There was pride in those eyes, pride that looked wounded. They spoke worlds to me. How dare you do this to my son? My only heir? My entire bloodline? He held his son for the first time in his arms and the only thing he could think of was his precious strength. It did not matter that I had been alone. It did not matter that I had suffered terrible pain. It did not occur to him that his son might have a personality, a heart, and emotions. Power was everything, and we were weak.  
  
He would have put him down then. He would have placed him back in his cradle like a bored plaything, if not for the fateful moment that I still believe is responsible for Vegeta's sparse affection toward his son. Moving to relieve himself of the infant, Vegeta stopped when a tiny hand thrust itself into the air and clutched at its father's face. I watched the way his entire body froze, tensed, as if not understanding what was happening. So oblivious to signs of affection, Vegeta remained still as his son's hands traveled over his face, wide, violet eyes searching his fathers. Then, as quickly as it had happened, Vegeta straightened and walked away from his now confused son, whose cry of protest nearly broke my heart, and made my husband wince.  
  
Vegeta stared at me for a long while. Then, he said the four words that changed my perception of him forever. "He looks like you."  
  
I didn't say anything. I wouldn't have been able to if I tried. Something was different in Vegeta's eyes that moment, something that was not there when he first picked up his son. And I became a deer trapped in the headlights, frozen, unwilling to believe that what I saw was love. So precious was the moment that I had no time for tears and could only hold my breath as the most gentle of kisses brushed my forehead. Then, he was gone, and I was alone again.  
  
I look up from where I have wandered. I am outside in my garden. The memory is fresh in my mind now, although it will never leave, it has been numb of late and now I writhe with the freshness of its recall. Why was it the worst day of my life? Because it made me realize just how cruel the person I love can be. Why was it the best day of my life? Because I birthed a son, a miracle, in the face of everything that defied me and told me I couldn't. I brought life to something that has forever changed me.and through him, I saw something in my husbands eyes that made every doubt, every cruel, biting word vanish within an instants time. So you could say that it balances out, and for the most part, I am a happy woman, albeit a confused one. 


End file.
